This month marks 10 years since I started writing monthly local history articles for The Local. I initially submitted a one-off article and was somewhat surprised when Mark Brooker, the publisher, responded asking if I wanted to write a monthly column. At the time I thought I only had material for half dozen articles and so initially only committed to that number. Ten years on I’m up to article 116, and the ideas for articles keep accumulating.
My writing about local history in the Lambton area began in the summer of 2014-2015 with a series of ‘then and now’ photographs published over the course of 16 days. To mark the ten years since the summer of 2024-2025 I have revisited each of the locations and taken another photo in the ‘then and now’ series.
Having written much local history content on this website over the last 10 years, the question of how to preserve this digital content in the long term was increasingly on my mind. However thanks to the recommendation of Ruth Cotton (noted community historian of the Hamilton area), my website has been added to the State Library of NSW Pandora archive of digital content.
Each year the library will store an archive of the local history content of my site (everything under the https://lachlanwetherall.com/then-and-now URL), so that when this site is no longer available, my content will still be accessible via the library archive.
Being added to the Pandora archive was a great honour, and a spur for me to re-organise my site to make sure that all the significant local history content is under the “/then-and-now” URL and can be reached via the That was then, This is now index page.
That’s terrific news, Lachlan! Your website has been a very valuable source to me. Thanks for all your hard work.
Cheers
Shannon